Staff Writer
The Green Building Council of Zimbabwe (GBCZ) says it is working closely with the government through relevant line ministries, departments and agencies to promote sustainable development and green building practices in the country.
According to the Council, the built environment is responsible for a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions, and adopting green building practices is crucial to reducing Zimbabwe’s carbon footprint.
GBCZ chairman Dr Mike Eric Juru, during an engagement with the Senatorial Committee of Environment, Climate, Wildlife, Tourism and Hospitality last Friday, said GBCZ is advocating for policy realignment to address the impacts of climate change and ensure a sustainable future.
“As Zimbabwe looks to the future, the adoption of green building practices is seen as a necessary solution to the country’s environmental challenges.
“The GBCZ is leading the charge, working with government agencies, parliamentarians, and other stakeholders to promote sustainable development and reduce the country’s carbon footprint,” he said.
He added that the engagement with the Senate, which comes on the heels of a recent engagement with the Parliamentarians, is part of the council’s broader knowledge-sharing efforts.
“Such efforts include cross-pollination of ideas to capacitate legislators with knowledge, context and the impact of our deeds, in the process helping them to craft and review our national policies with the environment in mind.
“As a member of the World Green Building Council, we have a lens on regional and global benchmarks and technically capacitated human resources from our global pool of affiliates in the areas of sustainable design, energy efficiency, water efficiency, waste management, and sustainable materials that would make for a greener, better, and more habitable built environment in the wake of climate change,” said Juru.
GBCZ also works in partnership with UN-Habitat, which is currently piloting the Harare Sustainable City Initiative on waste management, among other partners.
According to Juru, the fact that Africa loses an average of 5 per cent of its GDP to climate change and spends 9 per cent of its GDP on response efforts makes the green building movement a low-hanging and high-impact national panacea to the vagaries of climate change in Zimbabwe and beyond.
According to UNEP, the built environment is responsible for 39 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and Dr Juru said for Zimbabwe, achieving its Nationally Determined Contributions goal of reducing our carbon footprint by 40 per cent by 2030 is only possible if we tame our built environment.
“In essence, green buildings are not a movement but a necessary solution to our rising global temperatures and increasing prevalence of droughts and flooding in Zimbabwe and across the globe,” he said.
Dr Juru said with the realities of climate change, policies and regulations, being live blueprints, must also evolve to guarantee a future for our children’s children.
“The government is alive to this need for policy realignment, and as the Green Building Council of Zimbabwe, we will play our role to assist the government and the nation in this necessary climate action and sustainability journey,” he said.
In a presentation, engineer Hebert Parichi, deputy director of infrastructure planning and management in the office of the President and Cabinet, said looking at all policies which should be available and all gaps which will lead to climate neglect, the issue of climate change is now a reality for Zimbabwe.
“For too long, we have blamed the motor vehicles for gas emissions, not knowing the greatest emissions come from the built environment. Climate change is no longer distant or theoretical. “It’s in our hospitals that overheat during heatwaves, boreholes running dry too early and erratic rainfall, signalling an urgent need for Zimbabwe,” he said.
Eng Parichi said in Zimbabwe the informal housing, ageing public infrastructure and lack of efficient codes make this sector a hidden giant of climate risk.
He highlighted that the built environment contributes up to 39 per cent of energy related to carbon monoxide, followed by agriculture, forestry, and land use activities at 23 per cent.
Transport, industry, other energy and waste contribute 16 per cent, 12 per cent and 10 per cent in their order.
Alexander Chileshe, Head of Office and Project Manager for UN-Habitat’s Harare sustainable city initiative, said at least US$6 million has been spent on the pilot projects in the four areas of Harare.
“The pilot project that we are undertaking not just in Mabvuku but in four other areas of the city of Harare – the Belvedere area, Highfields and also Epworth – is focusing on showcasing what can be done in terms of waste management,” he said.
He noted that one can turn waste into wealth and can use energy in a very sustainable way to actually achieve a lot of purposes to grow your businesses, to manage waste recovery processes and also to have an impact on people’s livelihoods, and these projects are focusing on women and youth.
“The project is also showcasing that you can actually have bricks that are low carbon, as you don’t have to burn coal to produce a brick, which can cause a lot of damage to the environment,” he said.
Chileshe said for the next three years, UN-Habitat wants to focus on those areas, and after the pilot, it will begin to grow to other cities within Zimbabwe.
“By the way, this project is the only one within Southern Africa that UN Habitat is showcasing.
“We have done a lot of work in other parts of Africa and in the world, but for Southern Africa, we chose Zimbabwe because we knew this is an environment that is hungry for new innovations, and our hope is that we work with the government, where we have received a lot of support from the senators, the members of parliament and also government ministries and local authorities,” he said.
